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Leonard Nimoy

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It's not glare. It's the same momentarily illumination that belies the impact point on the bird of prey. On Enterprise -- a much larger ship -- The illumination there follows the torpedo's path across the hull and is present BEFORE the torpedo detonates; at the moment of impact it brightens only slightly before being swallowed by the fireball of the subsequent explosion.

It's glare. For it to be an explosion then the explosion point would illuminate everything in a spherical direction.

Inverse square law: the brightness of the flash reduces as a function of distance (which is why the TORPEDO doesn't illuminate everything around it.

We're talking about the beginning of the explosion which is a lot brighter and thus causing the glare.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

Only if it is equidistant from the impulse deck. In this case, it is actually 5 times closer to the bridge dome as the impulse deck, which means the reflection on the bridge dome is 25 times greater. The reflection on the rest of the ship is apparently too dim to be perceived at all.

The initial explosion frame shows that everything is slightly brighter compared to the previous frames. That is consistent with glare. You can see this effect when the sun is causing glare on the road. In the link the sun's glare appears to be on top of or very close to the trees but we know it's alot farther away.

If it were where you say it was, then the front of the impulse deck should have received enough illumination to be noticeable, like the other frame that I point out in my earlier graphic.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

Simple: Enterprise-A wasn't a new build.

Scotty thinks it is.

SCOTT: U.S.S. Enterprise, shakedown cruise report. I think this new ship was put together by monkeys.

Now it could be argued that they got a "new ship" as in a ship they've never had before, but normally you wouldn't need to take an existing ship on a shakedown cruise. If it were a conversion ala TMP then this upgraded ship would've gotten new equipment just like a new build.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

The displays on the back wall of the Stargazer bridge feature an LCARS-style graphic. Hathaway, IIRC, has several such displays in its engine room and a few on its bridge consoles.

I've seen them but they don't look like LCARS. They have a more movie-feel to them, IMHO.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

The Stargazer's log screen is more ambiguous, but fortunately is totally consistent with the display style seen on the Excelsior class ships. It COULD be consistent with some of the displays on the Enterprise-A, which -- again -- would explain why the ship was in such a sorry state in TFF (the retrofits didn't work nearly as well as Starfleet hoped).

If it was a retrofit, they ironed out the problems by TUC. If it was a new-build as dialogue indicated in TFF, then they still ironed out the problems by TUC

Crazy Eddie wrote:

Actually my suggestion is that the Constellations DID manage to upgrade a bit over the years; they were able to be kept current with only minor expansions and replacements of instrumentation, sensors, weapons and other drop-in components that could be easily integrated into their systems. The point here is that even the converted Constitutions couldn't be kept current so easily.

I'm in agreement here.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

There are about a dozen references in Okudagrams and background references. It's also implied as recieving the same upgrades as the Lakota in time for the Dominion War.

I figured all Starfleet ships should've got a huge upgrade for the Dominion War I'm just not familiar with these inset graphics/okudagrams that show an upgrade.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

In the case of the Constitution class, it appears the new systems that were being retrofitted at CONSIDERABLE cost -- to the old Constitution class ships were being designed into brand new starships from the outset, which would have unquestionably included expansion slots for new systems that were being planned but not yet fully realized. Since the original Enterprise was destroyed and the inauspicious Enterprise-A was eventually decommissioned (likewise, probably a very old design) it would as simple as starfleet simply choosing not to build any more Constitutions after the last two in the fleet were pulled.

I'm in agreement. Starfleet probably looked at the next upgrade/modernization for the Constitutions and canceled it.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

An expansion which was a feature of every NEW Miranda and Constellation the moment their hulls began construction. They wouldn't build them to the old configuration and convert them later, they'd just build them that way from the very beginning.
Exactly: in order to accommodate it, they built something OTHER than a Constitution class.

Agreed.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

The piping has to connect to the vertical shaft somewhere in the engine room.

It doesn't HAVE to at all. It possibly does, because Starfleet engineers like to be able to physically look at their drive cores, but on Reliant the intermix chamber can be isolated from the rest of the engineering compartment room (the same way it can on the Enterprise-D) without dropping a gigantic pressure door and cutting the main plasma conduit in half.

The E-D still had the horizontal piping connected to the vertical core. In TWOK, even though the pressure door was down, the Enterprise could still go to warp (we never see it lifted off.) IMO, that pressure door was up for easy access but there doesn't appear to be any reason why it couldn't be down.

We're talking about the beginning of the explosion which is a lot brighter

Hardly "alot." It only illuminates a slightly larger portion of the bridge dome than the torpedo itself. It also isn't "glare" since the illumination of the bridge dome is offset from the actual impact point.

If it were where you say it was, then the front of the impulse deck should have received enough illumination to be noticeable

Only if the torpedo was as close to the impulse deck as it was to the bridge dome.

Now it could be argued that they got a "new ship" as in a ship they've never had before, but normally you wouldn't need to take an existing ship on a shakedown cruise. If it were a conversion ala TMP then this upgraded ship would've gotten new equipment just like a new build.

We don't know anything about the Enterprise-A except that it was given to Kirk as part of his punishment/demotion. For all we know, they dragged it out of mothballs a week ago and refurbished it just for Kirk.

The E-D still had the horizontal piping connected to the vertical core.

Which, if you remember, could be physically isolated along with the rest of the core by the big drop door in the event of an emergency (which is exactly what happened in The Drumhead). E-D's engine room also seems to have a convenient transparency installed so that the chief engineer can still run the engines from his office AND visually see the warp core in the event that the reactor compartment has been sealed off.

TMP Enterprise doesn't have this option: when the big door comes down, most of the engine room is still locked in with the potentially-exploding intermix chamber and cannot even access their controls without swimming through a cloud of radiation. The offset dilithium chamber in the Wrath of Khan version at least has the virtue of being locked behind a barrier of some kind (as does its larger Abramsverse counterpart) but the plasma conduits are still exposed to the open air and cannot really be isolated in an emergency.

We're talking about the beginning of the explosion which is a lot brighter

Hardly "alot." It only illuminates a slightly larger portion of the bridge dome than the torpedo itself. It also isn't "glare" since the illumination of the bridge dome is offset from the actual impact point.

Then how do you account for portions of the bridge dome not in Line of Sight to your hypothetical explosion point getting lit? The explosion point would need to be far to the port side of the bridge to illuminate it that way. It can only be glare.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

Now it could be argued that they got a "new ship" as in a ship they've never had before, but normally you wouldn't need to take an existing ship on a shakedown cruise. If it were a conversion ala TMP then this upgraded ship would've gotten new equipment just like a new build.

We don't know anything about the Enterprise-A except that it was given to Kirk as part of his punishment/demotion. For all we know, they dragged it out of mothballs a week ago and refurbished it just for Kirk.

Sure but we do see that by TUC she has a different vertical shaft than from her TWOK days. It doesn't appear to be older equipment.

Crazy Eddie wrote:

The E-D still had the horizontal piping connected to the vertical core.

Which, if you remember, could be physically isolated along with the rest of the core by the big drop door in the event of an emergency (which is exactly what happened in The Drumhead). E-D's engine room also seems to have a convenient transparency installed so that the chief engineer can still run the engines from his office AND visually see the warp core in the event that the reactor compartment has been sealed off.

TMP Enterprise doesn't have this option: when the big door comes down, most of the engine room is still locked in with the potentially-exploding intermix chamber and cannot even access their controls without swimming through a cloud of radiation. The offset dilithium chamber in the Wrath of Khan version at least has the virtue of being locked behind a barrier of some kind (as does its larger Abramsverse counterpart) but the plasma conduits are still exposed to the open air and cannot really be isolated in an emergency.

The TMP Enterprise appears to have room for another door to slide down a gap to further isolate the vertical shaft and a control panel foyer (the one near where Kirk gives Decker the bad news). Of course the TUC version doesn't have this potential problem since it uses the same room design as the E-D.

Has there ever been a decent explanation, both in terms of show production as well as in-universe why the Star Trek universe is flooded with Miranda-class starships in the time of TNG/DS9/Voy but seldom (if ever) populated with Constitution-refit-class ships?

The Constitution Class Enterprise (i.e. NCC-1701-A) had the trademark of being "Kirk's ship", thus it's appearance in TNG at a time when we still had movies with the original Crew would have confused general audiences.

In-universe we might consider looking at the analogy of Nelson's Navy in the early 19th Century. The Royal Navy still had ships of the line like HMS Victory (or the fictional HMS Defiant depicted as a painting in "In a Mirror, Darkly") but the young US Navy felt that the faster and more maneuverable frigates like the USS Constitution would be more efficient and usable, and this turned out to be a good decision.

In a Trek context the Miranda Class could have equally turned out to be design that allowed for more flexibility and use than the Constitution Class that may have started to look like a dinosaur.

Alternately, we do not know if they could already do baryon sweeps ("Starship Mine") in the 23rd Century, something the Constitution Class might have required more frequently than starships of the Miranda Class.
Baryon sweep technology may have arrived too late to "save" Constitution and Soyuz Class starships from the junkyard.

Bob

I propose the constitutions and Mirandas simply represented a high-low mix similar to f-15/f-16, f-22/f-35, and Ticonderoga/Burke. While the two classes have broadly analogous design elements and equipments, suggesting they were of the same equipment/Technology generation; Connies have the big deflector dish absent from Mirandas. All later high end federation ship designs like excelsior and successive enterprises down the line all had the dish. This suggests Connies were also the high end of the mix and were correspondingly more lavishly equipped for higher end, elite missions, while being more expensive to man and run and somewhat less flexible in performing low end yeoman missions. Miranda with two shuttle bays and no deflector dish could be designed as low end of the mix, meant to fill more pedestrian missions and produced in quantity to fill out numbers for the star fleet in case of war.

Typically in any systematic procurement plan, higher end assets in any fleet are kept more up to date, and replaced more promptly as they became obsolescent, while lower end assets, are allowed to soldier on longer.

In-universe we might consider looking at the analogy of Nelson's Navy in the early 19th Century. The Royal Navy still had ships of the line like HMS Victory (or the fictional HMS Defiant depicted as a painting in "In a Mirror, Darkly") but the young US Navy felt that the faster and more maneuverable frigates like the USS Constitution would be more efficient and usable, and this turned out to be a good decision.

Well, let's avoid that analogy, because this was primarily a size issue at that point. In fact when the US Navy got around to actually building a ship of the line circa 1814, the USS Independence, nominally a 74-gun two decker was in fact larger than most of the Royal Navy's 80-gun ships and had an actual armament of 90-guns. This was born out of strategic necessity, as the USN wasn't expected to contest superiority at sea, but rather was a "break out" force that would break free out of blockaded ports and try to cause as much havoc among the blockading squadron as possible.

Miranda with two shuttle bays and no deflector dish could be designed as low end of the mix, meant to fill more pedestrian missions and produced in quantity to fill out numbers for the star fleet in case of war.

Welcome to the BBS, and although I read in another thread that you don't like the idea of starships performing mundane cargo transport duties, I can't help to remind that these openings at the stern of the Miranda Class look anything but shuttlebays compared to the visual design language of shuttlebays from the TOS Enterprise to the Voyager.

I think these are inserts (and exterior connect hardpoints above) for cargo containers, but by the 24th Century Sisko's Saratoga obviously uses this space for shuttlecraft (just as I use my garage to store bikes and junk but not what the garage had been originally designed for).

Bob

__________________
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth" Jean-Luc Picard
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

Miranda with two shuttle bays and no deflector dish could be designed as low end of the mix, meant to fill more pedestrian missions and produced in quantity to fill out numbers for the star fleet in case of war.

Welcome to the BBS, and although I read in another thread that you don't like the idea of starships performing mundane cargo transport duties, I can't help to remind that these openings at the stern of the Miranda Class look anything but shuttlebays compared to the visual design language of shuttlebays from the TOS Enterprise to the Voyager.

I think these are inserts (and exterior connect hardpoints above) for cargo containers, but by the 24th Century Sisko's Saratoga obviously uses this space for shuttlecraft (just as I use my garage to store bikes and junk but not what the garage had been originally designed for).

Bob

If star ship's shuttle function is secondary to its main design criteria, then one would expect the design language of the shuttle bay to adapt to the main design criteria of the ship, rather than the other way round, right?

If reliant is designed with an extended saucer section for a more important reason than to convenience the shuttle arrangement, the it is the shuttle handling arrangement that must change to adapt to the design of the extended saucer section, not the other way round. Right?

So how would one design the shuttle handling arrangement on the Miranda/reliant without imposing changes on the basic arrangement of the extended saucer section? It seems two rectangular doors on either side of impulse engine makes sense.

You could say it is a modular space adaptable to both shuttle and cargo use. I have no problem with that. But my view is anything built like either enterprise or reliant clearly weren't designed with maximizing cargo space in mind. A sphere or a cube provides much more useful volume for the same structural weight as the complicated and convoluted star ship shape with saucers and pylons. It simply makes no sense that ships designed the way federation starships are designed could have had cargo space as a high priority.

So how would one design the shuttle handling arrangement on the Miranda/reliant without imposing changes on the basic arrangement of the extended saucer section? It seems two rectangular doors on either side of impulse engine makes sense.

I think the first question should be whether the Miranda Class needs shuttlecraft storage in the first place and whether shuttlecraft are truly a part of its "work description".

I had always felt that the two shuttlebay doors (compared to the Enterprise's) simply look like one too much. They can (and will) use transporter rooms instead.

And then we have the Constellation Class ships from the same era that appears to have plenty of shuttle and cargo space.

Chuck4 wrote:

You could say it is a modular space adaptable to both shuttle and cargo use.

Yes, the DS9 pilot episode seems to suggest that, although it takes place in the 24th Century and large cargo containers may have gone out of fashion.

Chuck4 wrote:

It simply makes no sense that ships designed the way federation starships are designed could have had cargo space as a high priority.

Not necessarily a high priority, but we can't exclude the possibility that transporting cargo containers had a higher priority in the late 23rd Century than carrying shuttlecraft.

Bob

__________________
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth" Jean-Luc Picard
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

Since there is no material fact behind any of this, only wishful interpretation of what other people made up, sometimes on the spot, I'd say we can't exclude anything.

But being a Trekkie and a naval history buff, I have to prefer an interpretation with a naval analogy. I would think transporter is nice, but it is only a substitute for one of a ship's shuttles' many possible roles. A reasonable collection of versatile shuttles are, like the collection of ship's boats that grace every sailing warship, vital to the a starship expected to operate independently, away from heavily built up federation economic and logistic centers, for lengthy periods of time.